Friday, September 01, 2017

On Tuesday evening, Google sent a conservative website an ultimatum: remove one of your articles, or lose the ability to make ad revenue on your website. The website was strong-armed into removing the content, and then warned that the page was "just an example and that the same violations may exist on other pages of this website."

"Yesterday morning, we received a very bizarre letter from Google issuing us an ultimatum," Shane Trejo, media relations director of the Republican Liberty Caucus of Michigan, wrote on The Liberty Conservative. "Either we were to remove a particular article or see all of our ad revenues choked off in an instant. This is the newest method that Big Brother is using to enforce thought control."

The ultimatum came in the form of an email from Google's ad placement service AdSense. The email specifically listed an article on The Liberty Conservative's site, stating that the article violated AdSense's policies.

"As stated in our program policies, Google ads may not be placed on pages that contain content that: Threatens or advocates harm on oneself or others; Harasses, intimidates or bullies an individual or group of individuals; Incites hatred against, promotes discrimination of, or disparages an individual or group on the basis of their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization," the email stated.

The email warned The Liberty Conservative that it must either remove ads from that page, or "modify or remove the violating content to meet our AdSense policies."

"Please be aware that if additional violations are accrued, ad serving may be disabled to the website listed above," the AdSense email warned. "Please be aware that the URL above is just an example and that the same violations may exist on other pages of this website or other sites that you own."

Trejo argued that the article Google specified "contained no offensive content." Rather, it "was merely distinguishing the many differences between the alt-right and literal Nazis."

The Liberty Conservative writer suggested that the article was singled out because it was written by former Liberty Conservative contributor James Allsup. Allsup was involved in the "Unite the Right" riot (which Trejo described as a "rally-turned-riot") in Charlottesville, Va. Trejo said the article was targeted because "it was authored by a man deemed to be an 'unperson' by the corporate elite."

"Due to financial constraints, we had to comply with Google's strong-arming tactics for the time being," Trejo admitted. "An independent publisher such as The Liberty Conservative needs revenue from the Google ad platform in order to survive."

Milo was prescient. Milo was right. From Dangerous, which is read by Milo himself and is now the #1 bestselling audiobook.

Twitter is the Silicon Valley company where progressive bias is most apparent, but Google is the company where it is most dangerous. If Google decides that it doesn’t want web users to find something, it would be very difficult to stop them—or even to find out they did anything in the first place. That’s probably why, out of all the Silicon Valley companies accused of bias, it was Google’s that Donald Trump addressed directly.

No conservative organization should be on AdSense. As is clear from the example of The Liberty Conservative, that is literally permitting Google to dictate your content.

I am currently using Kolab Now as an alternative. It's not as good of a product, but it's certainly better than nothing. It does charge a monthly fee, but by paying them, you become the customer, rather than the product. If there is any interest, I will write up a thing about my research for alternatives, and either post it in the comments, or send it to Vox, depending on his preference.

I have to admit a certain naivete on my part. A few years ago, when an older friend mentioned the great potential for evil by Google, albeit for slightly different reasons, I laughed it off. I thought they would always populated by math and science guys like my friend and I, with no time for social justice bullshit.

It's breathtaking how quickly, easily, and thoroughly the company was converged from top to bottom.

Social Justice is not only a cancer, but an incredibly malignant one metastizing at an incredible rate. In other words, the equivalent of colon cancer.

This is nothing new. I frequented a video game message board way back in the day in 2004 that had Google ads, and Google forced the admins to delete a forum topic that they deemed too controversial. I guess it violated the TOS or whatever. In any case, Google has been policing internet content for at least 13 years now as far as I know. Google ads are a mistake.

These times in which we live are teaching me the value of institutional power. When a group of people, a faction, possesses an institution that expresses or represents their commonly held values they also possess a defensive barrier against opposing factions that seek to undermine those commonly held values. There's something to be said about separatism.

I'd be very interested in that. I'm transitioning (heh) away from Google products.l by trial using Protonmail, Brave & Duck Duck Go. I also block Wikipaedia. Its not easy or seamless but so far so good.

Meh... They were working with a - private company -, it is hilarious to have republicans whining about private company reserving its rights to modify or terminate their agreement (which is within their right in this case) and implying that private companies should be under state control. More like Comrade Trejo of People's Republican Liberty Caucus of People's Socialist Republic of Michigan, amirite...

@17 I'm hesitant about declaring Google as a public utility for this gives the national government power over what is currently a monopoly. There are too many instances in which national government abuses powers it acquires. Certainly it is beholden to our Bill of Rights but its abuses of such are often remedied through a lengthy and lethargic process. By the time the remedy arrives, if one does, the goals for which the abuse was enacted have already been reached.

I might prefer greater deregulation of the industry as an alternative to making Google into a public utility.

@ 19. The Conservative Movement it's history of failure, the GOP and loathsome Cuckboys (like Paul Ryan that denounce leftist violence AFTER Dem leaders), useless libertarians, and the stupidity and laziness of the American sheeple, this makes them think they can away with almost anything, and then rewrite history.

Oh and the fast and growing new Fake Americans that are less than concerned, enthusiastic actually, with wiping out American principles of Old racist White Men.

There was this book by Zajdel called "Paradyzja" (never translated into English). It takes place in a supposed space station, who gained independence from evil capitalists from Earth. Because of constant danger from those evil imperialist, everything is constantly monitored. Any sign of potential rebelious words are detected by self-learning AIs. People are forced to wear bracelets showing their locations.

As a result, everyone on the station is speaking and writing poetry. They speak about "where to hide my heart from the avenging angels" and another more and more progressive poems, full of metaphors. This is Koalang: a language devised to deceive automatic algorith, where every metaphor have to be used only once, every communication relies on loose conotations and the context.

From the bottom of the Times article--- "As part of a legal settlement, Mr. Hauser must donate his profits from the publication of his book to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy group for Muslims."

Once again, the Dane Geld is paid in full. The message is now very clear isn't it? You will conform or die white man...

Soft takeover of monopoly-holding companies by the national government basically belongs to shitlib endgame. This is to be fought by the creation of competitive alternatives, not by whining and playing into your enemy's hand.

kohn wrote:Soft takeover of monopoly-holding companies by the national government basically belongs to shitlib endgame. This is to be fought by the creation of competitive alternatives, not by whining and playing into your enemy's hand.

And by making sure that laws are in place to prevent ideological discrimination.

Unless anything is strictly illegal or a clear life threat, anyone should be free/able to publish whatever the fcuk they want.

If a private company does not want conservatives in their platform, do so stating it clearly.

If companies do not want a set of consumers they should have the balls to say so, and we will react accordingly.

What we have now is a scenario where they want to have the cake (all the cakes), eat them, laugh at us, and feel good about it.

I never understood the appeal of Google. It's browser was not noticeably better than any of its competitors, yet Millenials flocked to it and spoke of it as if Web browsing didn't exist before Google. I understand the expansions and acquisitions Google has made since then, but I never could see any clear benefit to a user for browsing with google.

So we're both taking flak and being shot at by water pistols. Maybe India is the only one on duty?

Nothing will ever quite top the p*gate shills, though. For about 24 hours after someone started putting together the connection, the shills were clearly told to pump it up because "it'll make them look stupid". You could almost see in real-time when the orders went down to kill the discussion as fast as possible. Clearly, someone wasn't happy when we stumbled onto something important.

Minus the whole preventing Civil War 2.0 bit, the 2016 Election was actually a lot of fun, in hindsight.

"A sane business would but I don't know if they are sane at this point."

They don't need to be sane. They have cash in fcuk you quantities. They think that because they have a virtual snapshot of reality at any given moment, they can direct it. Their influence peddling is on the cusp of becoming counterproductive, or already has. It's not the end for Google, but it is the beginning of the end.

Google goes after AdSense publishers because it's easy. In truth, AdWords (the advertiser side of the equation) is so granular that one can choose the specific site's on which one wants to show their ads and exclude all others. The AdWords GUI, however, is so purposefully convoluted that the vast majority of advertisers don't stand a chance of figuring it out.

In short, to hold the advertiser himself responsible isn't a money-maker, whereas simply demonetizing the (AdSense) publisher not only gets Google the cost per click/CPM (i.e. Cost Per Mille) on the AdWords end; but, also gets Google the publishers share (i.e. the AdSense end) that they refuse to pay out because arbitrary -- and sometimes capricious -- ToS violation by the publisher.

It's an ingenious grift, really. And they have been getting away with it from day one.

In the early days, the Google Search really was massively better. But the main thing? It was all text. This meant the pages loaded extremely fast even on dial-up. Google came on strong before GeoCities died and MySpace was king. During the Gif-pocalypse Era, Google was a respite from the disaster.

Chrome came with integrated Flash fork that ran a ton better, along with being a lot faster (Firefox had already gotten pretty badly bloated) and managing the memory better. Chrome & Android are actually Google's two really good "products", but mostly because their engineers clearly use it themselves. Chrome works "out of the box" better than IE ever did and much better than the place Firefox had gotten itself into.

I have a much younger cousin who was raised liberal, graduated from a top-tier Ivy League school, and has worked for Google the past 3 years (his first job). He was passing through town and stopped by our house to visit a few weeks ago, right after the Damore firing. He's planning to leave Google and reiterated several times with great vehemence that "Google is evil". I found that very interesting, but I didn't pursue the thread because I didn't want to annoy everyone else by getting into a political debate. Still, I don't think the tech companies realize what dangerous ground they're treading on. As much as certain people hated Microsoft, it was and still is very difficult to switch operating systems. It's a lot easier for most people to switch web sites.

Question: What does anyone who has thought about and digested the "Commodity Ad Network" think about them and their coin? It seems pretty alt tech, but from the goldbug community rather than the alt right. Here is there whitepaper: https://commodityadnetwork.com/whitepaper/I came to it via zerohedge to TF Metals Report to SRS Rocco. I don't think much of SRS Rocco's metals analysis, but would be interested in the freedom related aspect of a blockchain decentralized ad platform dedicated to free speech. Thoughts?

Comment: I strongly agree with Al above...not regulated as a utility, handing the politicos the one ring to rule them all...google needs to be trust busted. No ad platform should have more of a percentage of the market than any of the baby bells. Google needs to be broken into at least 6 independent, competing pieces. Or perhaps pay a fine sufficient to fund the armed forces for a couple of decades, or close the social security trust fund shortfall.

I'm hesitant about declaring Google as a public utility for this gives the national government power over what is currently a monopoly.

Normally I would be too, but why do we fear that? Because it would mean one ideology, victorious in politics, would control important private institutions. If you're on the right, you don't want it because it would mean leftists who win elections would be able to use these private businesses to persecute their enemies to the right.

But this is already happening at Google. The Left already controls it and is using it to persecute its enemies, without going through the step of government control. Just last night I heard a liberal video game streamer explaining how Google/YouTube is simply responding to its advertisers' needs, because Pepsi (for instance) doesn't want to run ads on pro-Nazi videos. That sounds reasonable. But they're demonetizing Ron Paul -- because Ron Paul is far more dangerous to the Left than some nobody with a Nazi flag in his bedroom. Pepsico didn't demand that Ron Paul be persecuted; Google's SJWs did. The oppression we fear from government control of monopolies is already here.

I'd prefer to use the threat of government oversight to force Google back to the relatively benign policies it held until recently. I don't know if that's possible, though. The other part of this, which doesn't get mentioned much, is that certain parts of the government already have their fingers stuck in at Google. It's not an accident that this push has come at the same time that the Left tried to spark a firefight in Charlottesville (it has intensified since Charlottesville with that as the excuse, but it started before that), that they've whipped Antifa up into overt revolution, that state politicians are calling for the president's assassination. It already has a lot to do with a battle that's going on in Washington, in which the CIA and Google are on one side.

Also, as many have already pointed out, the "Google is just protecting and serving its advertisers" excuse falls apart from the fact that they never made such an effort to prevent advertisers from having their ads run on ISIS recruitment videos, for instance. Everyone understood that it's an automated system, so an ad showing up on a video or web page doesn't mean the advertiser supports the content. Everyone accepted that. It's just an excuse.

Google ads may not be placed on pages that contain content that: Threatens or advocates harm on oneself or others; Harasses, intimidates or bullies an individual or group of individuals; Incites hatred against, promotes discrimination of, or disparages an individual or group on the basis of their race or ethnic origin, religion,

Maybe we should start submitting every single instance of threatening harm (BLM? Alt Left? CAIR? Berkley mayor?!)? I wonder if objecting to GOOGLE actually intimidating and discriminating against this (and other) conservative group(s) would cause a logic loop and the end of the universe?

Yeah, I was skeptical that big companies like this would be so blind to the bottom line, willing to bleed huge money for such causes.

I now realize that since SJWs always project, and they always thought that the right was willing to do this for "racist" reasons (e.g. hiring, denying service), that they would indeed do it themselves, when they got into such power positions.

The only "reason" a woman has is in relation to the hierarchy she is in or seeks to join and advance. Conservatives being stooges are these days little more than stepping stones for these women, as conservative stooges take a woman's word at face value.

Another thing that can be done is the following. If hosts-for-hire really are that choosy about the content they host, then strip them of all of their Safe Harbor protections, demote them from whatever Common Carrier status they may have. Then, every copyright violation they host is will be them, and they will be culpable for every crime they help enable. If they have helped ISIS recruit thereby, they can be found guilty of conspiracy to commit treason.

The idiot SJWs really over-estimated the opportunity their manufactured crisis at Charlottesville.

It's as if the marching orders that went out immediately after Charlottesville were based on the fact that there had been a massacre, maybe the deaths of a few policemen from right-wing fire, something so shocking that Americans would agree with the suppression of the entire political Right.

Except the massacre never happened, apart for one vehicular crime and a helicopter accident, both of which the media seem oddly uninterested in exploring. But someone forgot to rewrite the marching orders.

Speaking of vehicular crimes and narrative enforcement, how bizarre is it that a car driven by a Trump-hater who has posted online that she wants to shoot right-wingers could come bursting out of the trees along a Missouri highway just at the moment the president's car is passing by, and be stopped when it slams into a concrete ditch -- and this is not considered newsworthy? Maybe it wasn't an assassination attempt; maybe she was going to drive alongside and moon him. Still seems like news.

The double-layered approach they normally take to avoid any obvious responsibility in events like Cville is so give separate by conflicting orders to different aspects. You really only need 2-3 ppl actually "in" on the Operation to cause it to happen.

Cville wasn't supposed to actually happen. Remember, it required a stay from a Court. When it was clear it was happening, they sprung a trap they've been trying to setup for months. (They try to setup multiple and one of them eventually "happens".) It was a clear Pincher move; Block the North & East, drive the rally members to the South & West, right into the Alt-Left.

The Militia guys were supposed to open fire, killing Alt-Left. Two things happened: 1) Militia guys made a beeline out when the order to clear was given. Even the Alt-Left Nazis aren't going to bother a Men with a lot of weaponry. 2) Antifa is flooded with undercover Feds. It's another layer of the Black Hat vs White Hat war that's been raging in D.C.

Forces all over the place have started to take a reading of the winds and their "globalism" would appear to have just been a matter of economic tide. We're seeing a lot of the "pets" starting to get isolated. The first RICO case that gets dropped is going to be earth-shattering.

Last point, people easily forget that Trump was still a Power Elite. He just wasn't a D.C. player. He represents a lot of factions that were getting screwed by the NWO types. At some level, it's just economics, and it'll come at the cost of the globalists.

I'm skeptical of the claims until they post the letter/e-mail in full. I looked up the traffic stats for this site and they rank 92000 on Alexa. That means they are get about $60 a month in ad revenue from AdSense. Even if they were threatened, there's no reason to take the threat seriously.

The problem is that any sufficiently large corporation is indistinguishable from a government. In fact, I would argue that a communist state is a giant monopolistic corporation, with the Politboro as the board of directors.

While I'm not a fan of the U.S. gov't making these companies work as public utilities, the fact is that large corporations are now openly functioning as an unelected, tyrannical government. Even their ability to lose money and yet keep running by borrowing against their power (in effect) is a governmental attribute.

Yes, I just read this morning that the FBI classified Antifa as domestic terrorists last April and has been warning about them ever since. That explains part of why the Left/media are backpedaling away from them so fast now. It's not just that Americans are seeing they're violent now; they're suddenly seeing that they've been violent for more than a year, that this was well-known by those who were calling them "peaceful protesters against racism," and that the media thought men getting their wangs cut off was more newsworthy than terrorists in our midst.

Of course, the cucks like Romney haven't been challenged on why they were shilling for domestic terrorists, because the cucks are useful.

What a killer blog.. It's been a couple years, so finding a link is a task; but I can relate what the post was about: A guy wants to set his mother up with a monetized site. She does kitchen stuff, bakes things, shares recipes and the like. He says that you need at least 40K visitors a day to monetize a site. They were getting the traffic, but noticed that an alternative ad service allowed them to choose which ads were displayed. So when she baked a lemon meringue pie, she would choose ads for pie tins and crusts, which she got a commission for. Much more profitable. Might have had something to do with Amazon, really can't remember the specifics.

@32 If a private company does not want conservatives in their platform, do so stating it clearly.If companies do not want a set of consumers they should have the balls to say so, and we will react accordingly.

Ooh, you mean like "freedom of association"?! What a novel and amazing concept!

Even if they were threatened, there's no reason to take the threat seriously.

The threat to withhold AdSense revenue isn't the major threat. If Google flags a site as "bad" in some way, it's also likely to drop off the front page of Google's search results. That can wipe out half of a typical site's traffic, potentially cutting all its revenue proportionally.

If there is a good argument out there as to why Search, itself, ought not be declared a public utility I've yet to see or hear it.

Easy: It's not a utility. Whether I get natural gas from A or B doesn't matter, except price. Whether I get electricity from A or B doesn't matter, except price. But whether I search SJW-converged A or Alt-Tech B is always going to matter; search engines can't be commoditized because there's intrinsically too much subjective judgment in the results.

That's why "let the government take it over" would still be a bad idea; the left just has too many natural advantages there. The Left has a natural affinity for jobs that involve letting them drink at a trough of free resources and being paid to tell others what to do, the right has a natural affinity for doing useful work, keeping governments out of left-wing control is going to be a constant fight. Trump's presence in the White House won't last forever, and sooner or later there's going to be a non-Trump congressional majority and President again. Handing them "the gateway to the modern internet" on a silver platter is a bad idea.

Break 'em up is a far better plan. And they need to be broken up in a way that ends up with multiple search companies, not just slicing search away from Youtube away from maps away from Adsense etc.

Use the Sherman Act and its progeny to bust the tech monopolies before you worry about nationalizing them. Break Alphabet into its constituent letters. Youtube, Blogger, and the search components could all be separate and independent companies again, for example. Separate boards, officers, and ultimately separate owners. Treat it like Ma Bell, but without the kid gloves.

Now, I won't be able to spend all those super massive adsense bucks and I will be forced to buy one less box of practice ammunition a month.

Although they didn't get me for calls to incite violence, I've been careful about that.

So they have been hitting me with "sexual content."

Does this look pornographic to you?Hell no! Mind you, there are plenty of Blogger blogs that actually do have pr0n on them - Goolag does allow it:Adult Content: We do allow adult content on Blogger, including images or videos that contain nudity or sexual activity. If your blog contains adult content, please mark it as 'adult' in your Blogger settings. We may also mark blogs with adult content where the owners have not. All blogs marked as 'adult' will be placed behind an 'adult content' warning interstitial. If your blog has a warning interstitial, please do not attempt to circumvent or disable the interstitial - it is for everyone’s protection.

There are some exceptions to our adult content policy:

Do not use Blogger as a way to make money on adult content. For example, don't create blogs that contain ads for or links to commercial porn sites. We do not allow illegal sexual content, including image, video or textual content that depicts or encourages rape, incest, bestiality, or necrophilia. Do not post or distribute private nude or sexually explicit images or videos without the subject’s consent. If someone has posted a private nude or sexually explicit image or video of you, please report it to us here.And no, they did not put you behind that 'adult content' warning interstitial.

Easy: It's not a utility. Whether I get natural gas from A or B doesn't matter, except price. Whether I get electricity from A or B doesn't matter, except price.

This is muddling (public) 'utility' with the utilities themselves.

Google is the organization that maintains the infrastructure for Search; Search far more strongly resembles a public service than it does anything else and can therefore be considered a utility unto itself.

That's why "let the government take it over" [...]

Strong points.

Break 'em up is a far better plan.

So that there can be x number of smaller search engine entities subjectively manipulating objective algorithms?

@1 Google StrategistIt's so sad that Google is now “MANAGING” the News. In so doing it is violating the Constitutional Right of Freedom of Speech while at the same time imposing an ideology on everyone.

Freedom of speech belongs to those who can shout the loudest. Just look at what a great job I did getting that war with Spain started, and all I had was newsprint. Now that was news management!

Servitude is in the mind of death and lifeDon't be confused with the terms of left and rightStatism is Statism by any other nameApathy is suicide and we won't bear the Blame.

Good bye Good bye Shoot him onceGood bye good bye good byeTechno Jihad!Electronic- Holy WarTechno Jihad!Burn the System- to the CoreTechno Jihad!Hear the Angry- Voice of GodShoot him once now we release Techno Jihad

I'm Not a Fascist. But My Sons Are. wrote:Google is the organization that maintains the infrastructure for Search; Search far more strongly resembles a public service than it does anything else and can therefore be considered a utility unto itself.

I can't even unpack this argument, since it basically boils down to proof-by-assertion. Could you distinguish between what you think a "public service" is vs. not, in this context, and how it relates to other things regulated as a public search?

So that there can be x number of smaller search engine entities subjectively manipulating objective algorithms?

You have no choice. Search is fundamentally subjective. There is no such thing as objective search, and you can't use the Internet without searching capabilities. (Even if you want to use a walled garden in response, that walled garden is either going to provide a highly subjective search, or no search at all, which is even more subjective.)

Your best hope is to cancel as much subjectivity as possible with multiple sources.

On that note, while this is certainly asking for more than we'd ever get, when Google is shattered by an antitrust action, all but one of the resulting companies ought to be physically relocated out of the Valley. No point breaking it up if all the branches are just going to end up in the SV political bubble again.

Ahh, yes, it must be Burning Man season again. That wondrous time of year when all the Google execs close up shop and run off to the desert for a week of dropping extacy, group sex, and eating raw fetuses out of a baphomet skull filled with gold flakes.

I hear the childrens programs at Burning Man are especially good this year. Lots of "hands-on" exploration and learning.

I can't even unpack this argument, since it basically boils down to proof-by-assertion. Could you distinguish between what you think a "public service" is vs. not, in this context, and how it relates to other things regulated as a public search?

What does Search resemble? All else follows.

Search is fundamentally subjective.

No. This is like saying an internal combustion engine is fundamentally subjective.

That a subject is, in this context, manipulating the object (Search algorithms) subjectively does not mean that objective Search is impossible.

Indeed, this is (and has always been) what Google claims Search to be: An objective aggregator of the most objectively garnered results fulfilling an objective query.

With Search considered as a utility, Google would be held to account for both Manual (i.e. Pengin, Panda Et. Al) and Algorithmic updates.

Breaking Google Search up is not the first, best option as there is ultimately no accountability factor. Any resultant muh free market competition would be smoke and mirrors absent accountability for Manual and Algorithmic updates to SERPs.

"It's as if the marching orders that went out immediately after Charlottesville were based on the fact that there had been a massacre, maybe the deaths of a few policemen from right-wing fire, something so shocking that Americans would agree with the suppression of the entire political Right.

Except the massacre never happened, apart for one vehicular crime and a helicopter accident, both of which the media seem oddly uninterested in exploring. But someone forgot to rewrite the marching orders"

Yeah. Kinda reminiscent of the whole "fake news" propaganda campaign-- that really looked as if it was predicated on a Hillary win. She lost, but they went ahead with it anyway (and got their meme stolen). Kind of interesting to note that they managed to make an initial, vague link to the helicopter crash deaths (lots of headlines along the lines of "Ebil not-see KKK hate rally of hate causes 3 deaths") before completely dropping the helicopter crash story, though.

"how bizarre is it that a car driven by a Trump-hater who has posted online that she wants to shoot right-wingers could come bursting out of the trees along a Missouri highway just at the moment the president's car is passing by, and be stopped when it slams into a concrete ditch -- and this is not considered newsworthy? Maybe it wasn't an assassination attempt"

Funny you should mention that. Saw that on Gab yesterday, and someone was shilling pretty hard in the replies to the initial post. The party line that he was promoting was basically "Brake failure. Nothing to see here. Not a story. Muh 'conspiracy theory'." Etc.

It's nothing like saying an internal combustion engine is fundamentally subjective, because your internal combustion engine is not doing any speech acts. Metaphors make bad arguments anyhow and really ought to be used only for illustration purposes, but this isn't any good for that, either, because the list of differences relevant to a discussion of search engines and how they affect society are simply too long to be stuffed into a single comment.

Someone searches "Vox Day" on the internet. Search engine A returns his Wikipedia page first. (And remember, first hit matters, bigly.) Search engine B returns his Infogalactic page. Search engine C returns this site. Search engine D returns his Castalia house page. None of them are objectively wrong. Some of them might be subjectively wrong for you, some of them might serve some purposes better than others, but none of them are objectively wrong, and consequently, the choice of which one to serve is going to be subjective.

I think I'll let you have the last word on this matter, as I expect I've proved my point about fundamental subjectivity enough for most people's satisfaction, and once you establish that, the idea that a government could come in and run it as a "public utility" and that would solve the problems we're having becomes absurd.

(In addition, of course, to the fact that we have no reason to believe that a government that could is a government that would, but that's a whole different kettle of fish. But one that also scotches your whole argument too.)

Whether this takes the form of absolutely everyone moving away from Gooblagh and it going under (likely, but likely to be outsped by other options), Gooblagh being controlled by the Fed (likely, and relatively soon), Gooblagh just going under because no one sees/clicks ads anyway (likely, and relatively soon), Gooblagh being anti-trusted and split to oblivion in the midst of running out of money (likely, and relatively soon) or Gooblagh being overrun and destroyed by literal diversity with baseball bats and tire irons (somewhat unlikely, but soon), the Goolag is falling fast.

My good Libertarian friends are worried sick about the prospect of the State applying any restraint on bad actors...which they only see as good actors.

They revolt at the idea of the government creating the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate monopoly abuse by the railroads, but never utter a peep when the people who own the railroads combine against the public, create cartels, and misbehave. After all, they are not monopolists abusing the public, they are just "shrewd businessmen", in pursuit of their own self interests.

The Tech Giants cannot get a pass to pursue their own personal agenda, because that is not what they are selling. What they are selling is a service and what they demand in return is not mere money, but bent knees and bowed heads. That is why they are wrong and I would say they are wrong for doing that, regardless of which ideology they choose to favor.

Likewise, Ford and General Motors do not subject me to agree with their favored and approved ideology before selling me a vehicle, nor do they come repossess that vehicle, should I stray from the acceptable viewpoints.

Would Google knuckle under if they were facing a decently funded anti-trust suit?

A sane business would but I don't know if they are sane at this point.

They're not sane and you're falling into some common false premises besides. Wanting to see an anti-trust suit is based on two: 1) that there is a rule of law (there is not, because oligarchs like Brin et al are above all laws); and 2) that fake money is available to both sides on such a suit (Google has access to endless sums of fake money to pay lawyers, and the other major recipients of fake money and the manufacturers of the fake money are all on Google's side). The only entity capable of launching serious anti-trust against Google (which likewise operates on fake money) would be the justice department - still staffed bottom to top with Clinton-Bush-Obama appointees who have done nothing but resist any attempt by Trump to change the direction things are headed (all on Google's side). They would need to do the same to Faceberg and Twitter in order to proceed with a meaningful anti-trust suit.

Even in the unlikely event a suit was launched by the government and Google, et al lost - those who issue the fake money would still control the game. Breakups of Google, Faceberg and Twitter would result in a forced sale of components - and the only buyers around would be folks with access to the counterfeiting machine (who all share Google's genocidal vision). About the only one would could effectively get rid of Google in the short term would be Kim-Jong Crazy. Build the alternatives and make damned sure entryists are kept out.

"No. This is like saying an internal combustion engine is fundamentally subjective."

Tell me, can you or have you cracked open the code of Goolag search, and do you know how it works?

No? Then your analogy is bull****.

Here's the trick. Just because you have an idealized idea in your head of how an efficient, objective, simple search engine works, doesn't mean that Google's matches that in any way shape or form. There could be significant arcanity in there, and you'd never know so long as it doesn't slow down your search too much. Rebuttal #1. If you actually can look at the entirety of Google's search code, feel free to inform me that my argument is invalid.

Coincidentally, even if Gluelag search were miraculously actually completely unbiased, the topic (and the censorship) we're talking about doesn't actually have anything to do with it. We're talking about ADSense, and there's no denying that it is biased and subjective.

"The only entity capable of launching serious anti-trust against Google (which likewise operates on fake money) would be the justice department"

Coincidentally, the DOJ (or was it DOL?) is already on a highly uncomfortable and highly productive (for them) crawl up GlueLag's backside. Something about discriminative hiring practices or affirmative action. GlueLag is already poised to be an early SJW cannibal corpse feast.

Panzer Man wrote:The problem is that any sufficiently large corporation is indistinguishable from a government. In fact, I would argue that a communist state is a giant monopolistic corporation, with the Politboro as the board of directors.

While I'm not a fan of the U.S. gov't making these companies work as public utilities, the fact is that large corporations are now openly functioning as an unelected, tyrannical government. Even their ability to lose money and yet keep running by borrowing against their power (in effect) is a governmental attribute.

This is a superb and important point. The notion that Goolag, Faceberg and Twatter (and all the others deemed too big to jail) are somehow the same as a small Christian bakery is laughable. They own the government and they are the government. High government jobs and high corporate jobs are all a closed syste, with a revolving door between the two nominally separate sectors.

Not only is the basic organization of Marxism corporate (Central Committee = Board of Directors ; Politboro = corporate officers ; managers = soviet of party members). Communism has received major corporate support since its inception. Karl Marx did not sell enough of his books to make a living - he was supported by the arch-capitalist Friedrich Engels. Lenin and Trotsky were financed by the Warburgs, Morgan, etc. to overthrow the Kerensky government after the Tsar abdicated. Armand Hammer (Occidental Petroleum) was the major backer and leader of corporate aid to the new USSR and the program to build a military machine. Like so much else, the "capitalism" which exists in the west is dominated by fake capitalists. Anyone who thinks folks like (((Zuckerberg))) and the actual Nazi collaborator (((Soros))) believe in free-markets is either deluded or lying.

Guys, I don't know where did you get this notion that Google is a private owned company? Its ties to the deep state are so very clear, that you have to be extremely naive to think that its stupendous success and apparent monopolization of search was left unattended by the powers that be. Look at its early investors, at current major stock holder etc. The idea of anti-trust lawsuit against Google is somewhat hilarious, because it's as if you expect government to prosecute itself. Well, they might do it, but just for PR purpose, and the power structure will remain the same.

szopen wrote:Maybe in future we all will have to communicate in Koalang.

There was this book by Zajdel called "Paradyzja" (never translated into English). It takes place in a supposed space station, who gained independence from evil capitalists from Earth. Because of constant danger from those evil imperialist, everything is constantly monitored. Any sign of potential rebelious words are detected by self-learning AIs. People are forced to wear bracelets showing their locations.

As a result, everyone on the station is speaking and writing poetry. They speak about "where to hide my heart from the avenging angels" and another more and more progressive poems, full of metaphors. This is Koalang: a language devised to deceive automatic algorith, where every metaphor have to be used only once, every communication relies on loose conotations and the context.

A language of future, I would say.

I agree with you 100%. It's very true, and we have to hone our language skills to be able to pull it off. However, it also means that all the spergs will become pariahs.

I'm Not a Fascist. But My Sons Are. wrote:If there is a good argument out there as to why Search, itself, ought not be declared a public utility I've yet to see or hear it.A utility has 2 major traits, fungibility and barrier to entry.Power delivery is a utility because electric power is the same from provider to provider. The same can be said for telephone service, natural gas, water, sewer, cable TV, etc. Provided they meet certain standards of quality and reliability, nobody is offering anything substantially better than anybody else.Utilities have natural barriers to entry. In the case of power, it is the cost of running a power line into the meter. The same for water, telecom, etc. Entering the market would require the expenditure of millions or billions of dollars usually with no particular advantage to the end user.

Neither Google search nor AdSense can possibly be considered a monopoly. Anyone can enter the market at any time for a relatively small investment, and many have.What they are is monopolies. Using their market leverage Google have closed others out of the market for search and ad placement and are using that monopoly power to disadvantage the general public, content providers, and advertisers.

The Us has a well-developed body of anti-monopoly law. It needs to be used.

"Just in case anyone here is still suffering from the delusion that law means anything in the Fake Banana Empire, one of our Blackrobed High-Priests of Fakery has now ruled that Dindus are Injuns."

So they're a nation, but they don't get to decide who does (or doesn't) belong to that nation. Do the descendants of slaves that were owned by Jews qualify for aliyah under the Law of Return?

And Cantwell is still being held without bail after turning himself on on a bogus assault complaint by a (((tranny))), while the google in KC who stated back in 2014 that he wanted to "kill all White people," and has been doing his best since then to implement that plan, stalking and murdering at least 5 White men, gets bail.

"Utilities have natural barriers to entry." Another way to define it is that they are natural monopolies that provide an "essential" good or service (public service). High barriers to entry (fixed costs) + signicant economies of scale = natural monopoly.

https://infogalactic.com/info/Natural_monopoly

It's not really clear that the search engine part of Google is a natural monopoly. They clearly have disproportionate market power in the current year, though. Same thing seems likely with the AdSense part of things, though I don't claim to know much about that.

One could argue that Faceberg is a natural monopoly in a somewhat different sense. The "barrier to entry" in this case is existing "customer" (product) base. The major perceived utility of any social network is that it's "social"-- that a bunch of other people are using it. To take the extreme examples, a social network where you are the only user is worthless, no matter how slick the user interface and software functionality are; one that everyone else in the world has already signed up for has the maximum potential utility for a prospective user. Rather than a downward-sloping average cost curve, you have an situation where the perceived utility of the service to potential users increases with the size of the existing user base.

@117 Snidley Whiplash"A utility has 2 major traits, fungibility and barrier to entry."

You are mostly correct, but monopoly is not a feature of capitalism. Only the government can create monopoly power and that is why the same government has an obligation to protect the public from monopoly abuse. In return for monopoly power, the government requires the monopolist to serve all of the customers in their service area and submit to rate review by a public body. Basically, in return for monopoly power, the government regulates the required service and the prices charged the public.

Usually these are called utilities, but there are utilities that are more self-regulating....specifically, municipals and cooperatives....who are free to abuse their rate payers with few limits.

A surprising number of services are often exclusive franchises (monopolies) specifically granted by local government and weakly regulated, such as cable television, taxicab services, and airports. In return for fairly exclusive markets, they make the necessary investment in infrastructure and front-end expense.

While some of the utilities are publicly owned, many of them are private investor owned utilities, and these organizations were the ones the government most wanted to regulate as utilities.

In order to make the Tech Giants into utilities, the government would have to protect them from competition and regulate their pricing. I do not believe the government wants to do that, nor do the Tech Giants want them to.

It's not really clear that the search engine part of Google is a natural monopoly.

Yes.

To repeat: What does Search resemble?

Google gets away with as much as they do because of how far tech is ahead of the legal and ethical curve; and, because Search (in particular) skirts several paradigms that, while relevant in the manner Snidely illustrates, cannot account for resemblances.

The discussion of whether it is still possible to regulate Google and the other abusive tech companies is a good one. Whether we should support the attempt is not.

We face banishment from the Internet in the right now, not just from Google, banishment from DNS service, banishment from dating sites, everything. To argue against striking back at these converged entities is nothing but Cuckservative "muh constitution" or sperg Libtardian "muh free market" mewling. Yes mixing government with these companies might indeed pose risks in the future. But since the alternative is oblivion right now, to advocate for noble defeat is simply revealing the author as someone who can be safely ignored in all future discussions.

The big fight is going to be with ICANN. The usual U.N. suspects have already been issuing warnings that the U.S. needs to stamp out this dangerous "free speech" thing already, expect them to no platform any attempt to create a registrar who doesn't promise to obey the new rules.

Instead of Gmail, run your own mail server. Mine's hosted offshore for about €15 per quarter...runs Gentoo Linux, Postfix, Dovecot, and Roundcube (among other things).

Instead of Google Drive, set up a Nextcloud server. Depending on how much you need to serve up, you could run this alongside your mail server or you could host an instance with more storage at home. I took the latter approach with mine to have multiple terabytes on tap.

Anonymous wrote:It's your funeral.I've been running mail servers for 20 years. There's nothing magic about it. It's just a bunch of applications.If you want an all-in-one mail server, Zimbra free edition is very nice, and relatively easy to set up and configure.

Or yet another reason why I've long since blocked all of Google's advertising domains. Easiest way to do that is with a good HOSTS file. Such a HOSTS file and instructions on its use:

http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm

(Use HOSTS plus NoScript, and you don't need an adblocker, tho some sites will accuse you of it anyway because with this system your browser loads almost no ad content.)

Protonmail has been suggested as an alternative to GMail, but Protonmail recently kicked someone off the service for wrongthink; so much for that.

For a free email service, GMX is reliable, long-term stable (~20 years now) and far as I've heard, has never snooped in nor banned someone for their email content. Can be accessed via web or POP3. Parent company is the German web host 1&1.